Regaining focus

Spring has arrived here in Austin. Highs will be in the 70s all week. BR and I even slept with the windows open last night. Very refreshing.

Spring also means the end of the cedar allergy season. For me, cedar allergies are not only a runny nose and blocked sinuses and persistent cough, but also a lethargy that I find difficult to overcome. Pseudophed is just about the only thing that gets me through. Thank goodness I won't have to deal with that again until November.

I got a letter from my employer about a week ago. They are switching insurance carriers. Anthem Blue Cross has made headlines lately for outrageous rate hikes, prompting my employer to take their business to Aetna. I'm going to take this change as a sign that it is time to move BR to Medicare and a supplement plan. The main thing holding me back before was inertia, and this was just the push I needed.

BR and I have been struggling with a lot of negativity lately. The word "no" seems to flow out of his mouth very easily, expressing a contrary opinion over even the silliest of things. When I have the strength, I can laugh and let it slide. When I don't, it leads to some pretty heated arguments. I even find myself taking advantage of his sedation, allowing him to sleep longer than I know he would like in order to put off having to deal with the inevitable stream of criticism. This isn't one of my prouder admissions, and I'm taking it as a clear sign that it is time for both of us to seek some counseling.

I'm also taking it as a sign that it is time to stop working from home so much. My employer just moved into new offices on the edge of town with magnificent views of the Texas hill country. My hope is that the daily trip into the office will create some perspective on life that is impossible to maintain when I only leave the house to make groceries. I'm thinking of it like mini trips to California.

California Postcards

Oakland International Airport baggage claim

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San Mateo Bridge, late afternoon

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Lunch with co-workers, through cooking demonstration mirror

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Fog rolling in off the San Francisco bay

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Former neighbor Sabine and daughter Anouk

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On the road again

Whoa. June has been a whirlwind, and it's only half over.

It all started back in April when my bosses asked if I would be available to spend two weeks at one of our call centers to help train tech support on the new product. I chose Burlington, Ontario for the daily non-stop flight from Austin. You know, just in case. Then the planning started.

Since BR's diagnosis, the longest we've been apart was 8 days. With this trip, I'm doubling it to 16. For each of those days, he needs someone to help him with the morning and bedtime routines, with meals, and spend the night on-call in case something happens. Sounds pretty much like 24 hour care, huh?

In the past, I've adjusted his paid caregiver's hours to cover the morning and bedtime routines, and then asked family and friends to stay with him until I returned. But who's going to be available for 16 days? Nobody we know. By June 1st, we had all but 4 days covered. But then it became necessary to part ways with the paid caregiver. It was a mutual parting, but still ...

The search was on for a new personal care agency. After 2 days of calling 6 services, I finally found one that a) accepted private pay clients, and b) accepted clients under 55. They cost 50% more than the previous agency, refused to do wound care, and warned us that they would likely need to schedule 2 different caregivers to cover all the shifts.

Try 7. By last Wednesday, I realized that there was no way I was going to leave BR with a constant parade of unfamiliar caregivers. Then a miracle occurred.

I had spoken with my sister Cindy about how we were hiring a new agency, and made a passing comment that I would much rather pay one of her daughters to come care for BR. Well that Wednesday she called and said my niece Jordan was interested in helping out. Jordan is 19, beautiful, and stronger than I am. With BR's approval, I quickly wrote up a Live-in Caregiver Agreement so that Jordan would know what she was getting into. That evening she agreed, and I bought her a ticket to fly down on Friday.

Two days of intensive training later, I was on a flight to Toronto. But not before getting to spend a day with aunt Beth, Dede, and surprise guest cousin Paige.

Whoa.

Spring 2009 Trip Report: Silicon Valley and Chicago

I spent Monday through Friday back on the VMware home planet: Palo Alto. You know, there is really no substitute for hallway conversation. Twitter, IRC, IM, e-mail all pale in comparison. Informal interpersonal communication is the stuff that keeps software development groups focused on the common goals of the company. I feel like my self-imposed exile in Texas has put me at a bit of a career disadvantage, but I do my best to learn and teach from a distance. These quarterly visits back certainly recharge my engineering batteries.

From the San Francisco Bay, I flew to my home planet: Chicago. As I had mentioned before, my mother is in a nursing home. It's strange to think that exactly one year ago, we were preparing to meet in Las Vegas to celebrate my 40th birthday.

She came with my Aunt Helen, and I could tell at the time that something wasn't quite right. But I was surrounded by family and friends, both old and new, and I chose to defer to my mother's judgment. Within a week of returning home, she was in the hospital with an infected cyst on her groin. That infection turned necrotizing, and required major surgery to clean up. When I flew home to visit at the end of April, she could barely recognize me -- sepsis had set in and was affecting her brain. Yet she still responded to polka music, and strangely, whenever she was in pain, she would laugh.

There was a brief attempt to bring her home in July, but persistent bowel and bladder issues, along with general weakness put her back in the nursing home within a month. From there, she's been bouncing back and forth between the nursing home and hospital as the infections wax and wane.

She's now in a long term care facility, and the primary purpose of this particular visit was to move my father into a new house closer by. It was truly a family effort that included my Uncle Jim, Aunt Mary Jane, four of their five sons, three of my four sisters, three spouses, and a fantastic steak dinner at the local Moose Lodge. "If you want to talk Moose, do it at the semi-monthly meetings, not at the bar."

We completed the move in record time, and just before a late winter snow storm blew through.

Mom has gotten much better mentally, but the bowel and bladder issues are keeping her down. "I pee like a puppy," she's fond of saying. She's become quite introverted -- it takes a lot to draw conversation out of her. We played a few hands of Crazy Eights during which I got some stories about her fellow residents. She just wasn't willing to discuss any of the medical options being offered.

After she thoroughly kicked my ass at cards, it was time to say goodbye. But not before I simulated a wheelchair Tilt-A-Whirl ride for her in the hallway. It always was her favorite.